Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

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Chapter IV The Dutch School of Lambert ten Kate and Balthazar Huydecoper

In Holland not less than in England, after the example of Junius, a school of scholars arose, who studied the languages in their historical development and in comparison with each other. Arnold Moonen (1664-1711), William Sewel (1654-1720), Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731) and Balthazar Huydecoper (1695-1778) were the most prominent men of this school.¹

Arnold Moonen and William Sewel studied especially the grammar of the Dutch and the English languages; Lambert ten Kate studied the relationship between the Gothic, the Dutch, the Anglo-Saxon, the German and the Icelandic languages; and Balthazar Huydecoper devoted a great part of his life to the study of mediaeval literature, which came to the foreground as a natural consequence of the study and the importance of Gothic, and consequently of all the literary remains of past centuries.

Moonen published his Dutch grammar in the year 1706, which remained the textbook during a great part of the eighteenth century; Sewel, whose grandfather Jan Willem Sewel was born in the Netherlands and married a Dutch woman Judith Tinspenning, kept up his traditional love for the English language - his

1 Herman Paul. Grundriss der Germanischen Philologic. 2 vols., I. p. 35. W.J.A. Jonckbloet. Geschiedenis der Ned. Letterkunde. V, 566. Jan te Winkel. De Ontwikkelingsgag der Ned, Letterkunde, III, 354-362. Van der Aa. Biographisch Woordenboek on the names of these authors.

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grandfather came with the Brownists from England about the year 1600 - the mother tongue of his ancestors, and studied, besides English and Dutch, several other languages: French, Latin and Greek. He published in 1712 a Dutch grammar, in 1740 a compendious guide for the Low Dutch language, in 1727 his famous dictionary of the English and Dutch languages, and in 1718 an ameliorated edition of the Flemish grammar of La Grace.

But the master of this school was no doubt Lambert ten Kate. He was a man of great abilities and of fine taste. He studied not only philosophy, literature and languages, but he was as well a great lover of art, and collected a beautiful library of books about art and literature. His favorite study was, however, comparative philology. In the year 1710 he published a book on the relationship of the Dutch and the Gothic languages. But his best work was his Introduction to the higher knowledge of the Dutch language, 2 vols., Amst. 1723, in which he compared the Dutch with the Gothic, the Frankish, the German, the Anglo-Saxon and the Icelandic. After his death he left several unpublished writings, now in the University library at Amsterdam, among which is a work in two volumes on the sound system.¹ Herman Paul says that Ten Kate followed in the footsteps of Junius and Hickes, but that in his historical researches into languages he excelled them by far, and that among all the scholars of the older school Ten Kate came the nearest to the point of view of Jacob Grimm.² For etymology, says Paul, Ten Kate was the first in Europe who had a real scientific foundation for his researches.³

1 See Van de Aa. Biographic Dictionary under the name Ten Kate.

2 Herman Paul. Grundriss I, 35.

3 Ibid., p. 36.

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And last but not least, Balthazar Huydecoper was the man who saw even at the early period in which he lived the importance of all mediaeval literature, as a consequence of the historical method of studying languages which had grown up since Junius. To that historical research of languages he devoted himself almost entirely. He published Vondel's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, with manifold linguistic notes in 1730. But his best work was his edition of Melis Stoke's Rhyme chronicle of Holland, with many historical, archaeological and linguistic notes, in three volumes, 1772. This was the first edition of a mediaeval Dutch work with critical notes. ‘By these two works,’ says Dr. Jonckbloet, ‘Huydecoper has established an imperishable monument of his merit.’⁴

4 W.J.A. Jonckbloet. History of Dutch Literature, II, 309.